CloudMagic Review

What CloudMagic aspires to do is to help bring together the various cloud services that we use. The app, which recently just released, allows users to link a Google account (with support for Google Apps accounts) and a Twitter account, in order to index emails, contacts, calendars, and more, to make them universally searchable from one interface. So, typing in a certain search term will show relevant emails, calendar events, contacts, and recent tweets matching that search entry.

For example, I linked together multiple Google accounts and my Twitter account, then I did a search for “GDC” and the results were as expected. It showed all the results for GDC in my email inboxes. It searched my calendars for my GDC events. Most impressively, it did a search through only my Twitter contacts that I follow for tweets about GDC. I cannot stress how important and useful that last sentence is. Twitter search is such a mess, and having something that turns up relevant results from the people that I follow is worth keeping this tool around alone, never mind the Google integration.

In fact, the key drawback to CloudMagic at this time is the fact that it only integrates in Google and Twitter. For someone who uses both, this is fantastic, but for other email/contacts/calendar service users, it’s somewhat lacking. Facebook and Google+ would be useful services to integrate, as the commentary from people on those services could be useful in finding relevant social data. Twitter searching can only go back so far, likely due to Twitter limits, although it can easily find self-posted tweets and direct messages containing the search term. As well, having Google-esque searcheengine operators would help make the app far more useful. I’d love to search through Dropbox files to find relevant information as well.

While CloudMagic has a long way to go to be something all-encompassing, its current implementation is very useful for users of Google and Twitter. It even manages to out-Google Google in its universal search of Google services, something that Android surprisingly lacks. This is a very useful tool for Android owners.

CloudMagic Review Rundown

9

User Interface - Adding new accounts is easy, searching uses the same interface as built-in Google search, and everything is displayed clearly, with additional options in the action menu.

8

Usefulness - Searching through unified Google info is fantastic, and Twitter search is extremely relevant. There's just a limited number of services at this point.

Value - For those who use Google services and Twitter a lot, this is extremely useful. It may be of limited utility for non-Google account users. Of course, considering this is Google's OS, this may not be many people.

8.5

Overall - A fantastic utility that is surprisingly not part of Android itself.

Carter Dotson, editor of Android Rundown, has been covering Android since late 2010, and the mobile industry as a whole since 2009. Originally from Texas, he has recently moved to Chicago. He loves both iOS and Android for what they are - we can all get along!